Autumn Smith and her family didn’t get on Family Feud Canada in their first attempt, but by chance, they got another go at it.
Autumn Smith, her partner Sarah Gostlin, brother Stewart Smith and parents Maureen and Sam submitted an audition tape for the first season of the CBC show but got rejected. “It was probably the most embarrassing piece of art I’ve ever created in my life,” Autumn tells the MyMuskokaNow.com newsroom. She jokes it was worse than any of the drawings she made in Kindgeraden.
In the middle of 2020, Autumn says they got an email from a producer of the show asking them to audition again for the second season. “I was slightly horrified,” she says, laughing. This time around, she explains they did a much longer, more professional video showing off what their family is like. “I think our second audition video really highlighted our unique individual and collective beings,” Autumn says.
“They called us and said we’d like you to audition,” she says. The process involved multiple Zoom meetings with producers and even a mock show with another family. “It was a pretty lengthy audition process,” Autumn says. After all of that, the family got a call in September to tell them that they made the cut. She thinks that her mom Maureen was the “winning factor” because she talked a lot about her “fairy garden” that has become a local landmark where she and her husband Sam live in Oshawa.
Autumn explains that getting to be on the show is her parents’ “dream of a lifetime.”
“My family is a little quirky,” she says. “We are naturally an interestingly goofy family.”
Autumn says the experience was “awesome.” On tonight’s episode, they’re going up against the Miceli family. “They were just so supportive,” she says of them. Autumn adds that host Gerry Dee was a “gentlemen” and great to deal with. “It was just pure joy,” she says.
Despite constant prodding, Autumn would not say what the results of Tuesday’s episode were. She says even her kids don’t know what happened. “Our kids, our best friends have hounded us since the end of October,” she says. “They have tried every tactic.”‘
“I think it’s the biggest secret I’ve ever kept in my life,” she adds.
The Smith family’s episode of Family Feud Canada air Tuesday night at 7:30 PM on CBC. If the family wins, they will return for another episode on Wednesday. Autumn says the taping was such a blur that when they watch tonight it will be like they’re seeing it for the first time. “As it’s happening, you’re in a like a mad kind of trance, so I don’t even know if I remember half of the questions I was asked,” she says.